Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Seminar Presentations
I asked Anne a question and she asked it back to me. At first I was a little take aback, but since I like talking... and like talking about myself, I had no problem giving my opinion. I was just hoping all the classmates behind me didn't think I was a big dork.
Our topic is pretty big and covers a huge chunk out of art, technology, how we work as humans, where we're going in the future, etc. It was easy to get into philosophical discussions... i kind of wish it could have been more of the discussion it was almost turning into. Where we just ask the big questions. the whys and wheres and so on.
My head was full of lots of really really interesting information from the speakers, i wanted to wait a few days to process everything before i wrote about it.. but now i'm worried I waited too long. i guess i'll probably rewatch the footage from the night to refresh myself on everything, so that when we're putting together the website i can retell more accurately everything that went into the evening.
anyway... i started working on my own individual page. Basically I'm exploring one side of the discussion we had--about the 4th wall. i'll talk about my painting and interaction with the viewers as well as what Anne had to say on that and I'll bring in other examples. as i'm writing it, its starting to become about What is real? What is an illusion? that sort of thing... everything we make is a recreation.. but some things feel more real than others even though none of it is real. Anyway, that's the sort of thing I'm exploring...
I'll be posting examples of my work and hopefully images from some of the sources i'm references.
that's it for now.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
5 Questions and summary Chapter 3
1. With new styles of image gathering technology like motion and performance capture and artificially intelligent models that are based more on tactile data than on vision, is this creating a greater divide between the visual artist and their design?
2. What role will actors play in the future of film where they are no longer required for a visual design after their image has been sampled?
3. Video games and interactive media seem to provide for an infinite number of opportunities for re-framing and altering perspective. In this new media environment, will there be any room for the artists unique voice to resonate in a single image? Will the ability of the artist to have a point of view diminish? What benefits/opportunities could the desire for infinite perspectival views on the part of the audience provide for the visual artist?
4. When media has moved beyond the need for replication of vision but connects to all of our perceptual devices, will there still be a use for the frame in popular cinema?
5. Are there tools associated with Zbrush that could help make digital sculpting a more tactile experience for artists who are used to working in other mediums?
Nahomi's qustions
2. Virtual window works only for visions? Could it work with other senses?
3. I think artists has to make frames in any way because of limited space. Is it possible to make frameless artworks?
4. Zblush- what is the difference of required skill or knowledge to be applied between Zblush and other 3D program?
5. Zblush- What is the goal? How it could be better in the future? Applying more actual sculpture feeling?
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Chapter 1
This chapter is about Alberti’s frame and concept about perspective view and a window as a frame. She explain the elements such as the frame, point of view, the subject to be painted, and the viewer.
Alberti regards the picture as an "open window". He demonstrates his attraction to the illustrative powers of metaphor to enrich his abstract reduction of the phenomenal world of vision to the mathematics of point, line, and surface.
Alberti also supplies us with a Renaissance root for the concept of a windowed "elsewhere", not a realism of subject matter but a separate spatial and temporal view. The spectator's experience of "gazing" through the window had its own spatial effect - and yet this new perspectival realism of representational space did not imply realism of subject matter, nor, as we will see in a moment, did it imply a temporal realism.
More questions...
1. Will we ever reach a point where we move beyond the window, where we are immersed in the art--surrounded by it without a frame?
2. Since technology and ideas are evolving faster than we are evolving physically, what happens when the technology and ideas evolve beyond what we can comprehend? Is there a breaking point? What happens then?
3. A painting is static, but the viewer watching it is mobile. On screen, the images move, change--while we are static. How do each of those affect us as viewers--do we bring more in one form and take more in another?
4. What drives us to create? What is it about us as Humans that fuels this need?
5. Some works of art--paintings or films, break the fourth wall. I did this myself in my paintings in undergrad, i had the figure staring right back at the viewer, threatening them pushing them away... How does breaking the fourth wall change our interaction with the piece? If we are immersed into a work, engaged with it, does the window disappear?
6. It seems like even though technology changes and evolves and we are able to imagine and recreate things in a bigger broader way, we still tell the same sort of stories--we are still trying to understand who we are, where we came from, where we're going. What are your thoughts on this?
7. In the middle ages, religion fueled art and science, the body and real life was ignored when creating art. Now it seems the opposite is true, Science and technology influence what we do and less attention is given to religion and spirituality. Where did the switch happen? Can we ever have both? science and spirituality merging? They are interconnected, yet always seen as separate. Do you see this changing?
Chapter 5
To me, multiple windows means concurrency — things or events happen at the same time. For example, programs in different windows of the computer are running at the same time. The scenes in the split screens of a movie are happening simultaneously. It’s up to the receiver to decide whether receiving all information together or pick the one with high priority to him. Because of these multi-screens and multi-windows, people are busy receiving and processing the multi-channels information every day. It is a challenge to stay clear and keep own vision.
Luckily, windows in computer are still FRAMED within the monitor so far. The time of frameless has not come yet.
Chapter 2
Camera obscuras were used for things like astronomy and architecture, but not just science--they were good for parlor entertainment as well. Some painters used them for getting very accurate perspective, but it doesn't seem that lots of painters did this.
The camera obscura is both a perspective device (for the painters) and projection device--and the projection shows moving images, not still ones, which makes it all the more interesting. Perspective was in fact invented as a graphic technique two centuries before the camera obscura, so it's not as important to perspective as some say.
After all this info on the camera obscura, she writes some more about people's interpretation of its history in relation to painting and photographs. Essentially, photographs are more related to the camera obscura than painting. The part I found really interesting next was about spectators in relation to the camera obscura and virtual windows in general. Most people idealized the spectator's total detachment from the image: being able to watch something without being affected personally by it. These are the "apparatus" theorists. Others, the "surture" theorists talked about cinema's ability to bring the spectator into the image with continuity editing that brings them all around subjects in the frame.
Basically, the chapter is about the history, potential uses and effects of thr camera obscura, the original Virtual window. If you have any more specific questions about the chapter or any points, but send me an email.